@Caleb
oh my gosh, you are impossible to talk to. Your argument constantly changes to make sure u are right. I didnt say it was a personal attack. You cant claim to know that strength training hinders the mental development in parkour when you haven't even experienced it. Even if you had experienced it, you would only know what it did for you, and all you could say is, "when i strength trained, this is how it hindered my parkour training." This is why i said before that you argue opinion as fact. To me, it appears that the way you train hinders mental development, because u seem extremely stubborn and narrow minded to me. Thats not meant as an insult, thats just the way u come off in these "discussions." But still, i don't think that ur way of training is wrong, only that it can be complimented with strength training. Even if you appear stubborn and narrow minded because of it, i cant say "if you train like dave you will lose mental development and become stubborn and narrow minded" because i have no way to know the world through your mind.
The only thing that has changed about my argument is how I've phrased it. If you understand it differently now than you did at the start then that's down to this discussion clarifying the ideas. My point now is still the same as it was when the thread began. If you want to get better at getting past obstacles use Parkour and don't use weightlifting.
As I pointed out to Steven above, it is not necessary to have experienced something to know things about it. I reject completely the idea that we work in such different ways that the laws of nature are different for us both. Human development works according to certain principles, and if you know the principles then you can anticipate the effects of training. This is the basis of science, the belief that you can use knowledge and experience of many things to make accurate predictions about other things.
The basic principle of training is that your body tries to adapt to the demands placed upon it. It is constantly trying to re-balance itself to deal with changing priorities. It takes resources away from areas it's not using and put them towards strengthening areas it is using, so that your strengths at any given time are always simply a reflection of the abilities you've used most frequently. The more time you spend doing something one way the harder it is to do it another way. The more time you spend thinking in a certain way the harder it is to think in a different way, and weightlifting does involve thinking in a different way to Parkour.
Calling someone narrow-minded is an insult, whether you mean it like that or not. It's suggesting a flaw in me as a person. To have a discussion you have to accept that disagreement is possible between two honest, rational and free-thinking individuals, so if you're not willing to accept this then you might as well leave the discussion. Discussion always improves understanding, but some understanding requires more discussion than others. Some milestones in understanding ultimately require more than just discussion.
@Mr.WWII
And guess what Dave, all sport is mental. The field of sport psychology has been around for a long time because of it.
I agree, and I haven't said otherwise. However just because all sport has an effect on the mind doesn't mean that all activities have the
same effect on the mind. The point that I have been making is that it is
some elements of the Parkour mindset that are missing from most other activities, including weightlifting and all sports, not that those activities are missing
all mental elements. The fact that they are missing some mental elements means that they have a different overall effect on the mind. They involve a different mindset.
@Stevie Leifheit
Dave, do you believe you can only apply the parkour philosophy to parkour? Isn't it about moving past obstacles in everyday life. Well then, that 200lb weight I'm trying to lift, I'm going to call that an obstacle. And since you say parkour is mostly (pretty much only) a mental thing, and I used the mental (philosophical aspect) of parkour to give me strength in moving the weight, did I do parkour by moving the weight?
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking with your first question.
1) You can apply any philosophy you want to Parkour as long as Parkour's own philosophy is still there and intact.
2) Elements of Parkour's philosophy, such as the continual progression and the focus on an individual's path, can be applied to any activity. However there are some elements that simply don't apply to every activity.
The goal of Parkour is to help you get past the obstacles you encounter in everyday life. However Parkour has a method as well as a goal. The method of Parkour is just practicing moving past the obstacles to movement in your environment. If you're not trying to move past the obstacles in your environment then you can't be practicing Parkour. Pretending that lifting a weight is moving yourself from one place to another past an obstacle doesn't make it true.
My point is, if I use the mental aspect of parkour in everyday life, I'm going to become more confidant and comfortable with applying the philosophy to everyday life. That's what parkour is all about. Therefore, whenever I use the philosophy in real life circumstances, it strengthens my ability to do parkour. Right?
I think applying the mindset of Parkour to activities besides moving past obstacles does indeed make it easier for you to practice Parkour, and for me doing so is one of the important ways in which Parkour benefits you. However if you are applying contradictory principles at the same time then you aren't applying all of the principles of Parkour and so what you're using isn't the Parkour mindset but something else.
@Steven Low
1. How exactly do you know what is or is not mental in weight lifting when you don't even do weight lifting.
The same principles of training apply to all activities. Human development works the same way whether you're lifting weights or lifting a log or lifting yourself, agreed?
2. How exactly is repeatedly training moves in parkour (which is a poor attempt at strength and conditioning the body) any different than say picking up a log off the ground (which is more or less the same thing as a deadlift or clean).
I do not advocate "repeatedly training moves", I propose training by trying to get past obstacles. For me, there is an important difference between setting out to do 100 catpasses and setting out to get past 100 obstacles. I think the ability to get past the problems you face is based on your ability to adapt yourself to the demands of different challenges, rather than the ability to look at a challenge in a certain way so as to get past it with a standard technique. The aim of Parkour is to enable people to get past the obstacles they face and follow their own path through life, so you must make your practice about the obstacles limiting you and the solutions to them rather than a list created by another.
To me, moving yourself past an obstacle in your environment and moving a part of that environment are similar training methods. The important difference I'm concerned with explaining here is between lifting an everyday part of the environment and lifting a balanced set of weights designed for that very purpose.
3. How would you reconcile the fact that most lifts/sports similar to parkour taken to the highest level (power lifting, Olympic lifting, and other physical disciplines such as martial arts, gymnastics, etc.) also have a mental component? But they also benefit from specific strength and conditioning work aside from mastering movements that increase physical capacity?
Their non-physical component of those activities you refer to doesn't contain all that the non-physical aspect of Parkour does. A sport by most modern definitions is an activity practiced for it's own sake, and so doesn't have the practical considerations of a training system. Most training systems that are designed to help you are based on a different understanding of the demands of life, one that I (and many others, let's not forget) consider inferior.
4. It makes absolutely no sense to call parkour a purely mental philosophy, ESPECIALLY when you say that moves in parkour should be trained for parkour (which Blaine said back in like '06 or whatever then RECANTED btw) when that is exactly what some of the derivates of bodyweight strength and conditioning derive from. There is absolutely no difference between a proper structured weight lifting routine and bodyweight routine.
I've already covered the bit about 'practicing moves'. Just to correct you on some other points, I don't call Parkour a purely mental philosophy, and as I said earlier in this thread I wouldn't recommend standard bodyweight routines any more than I would recommend standard weightlifting routines.
Parkour is not purely mental, but the physical element is small. There are more mental aspects to challenges and the individual mental skills are more important too. I gave examples in a previous post.
The important difference is not between weighted training and bodyweight training, but between practical/real training and artificial/abstract training. Practicing practical tasks has more practical application than practicing tasks that do not exist in real life.
